Two on Wells

Book Reviews Volume 32:3, 1989 asks classicist Gilbert Murray to recommend a Greek grammar to study, noting that "though my childish acquirements are perishing, my very latest developments are still young." A week before his 94th birthday, he begins writing a new play. Shaw managed to turn even the diminutions of extreme old age into an opportunity to nurture previously neglected sides of himself. How many would be able to emulate the serene vigor he sustained until the very end? Dan H. Laurence has chosen these letters and commented on them to bring out inner echoes and relationships which succeed finally in turning the sequence into a moving story. The editor's headnotes tell us only as much as we want to know about relevant persons and background; his introductions to each section, especially the account of Shaw's last (post-epistolatory) days, correct previous misinformation and seem definitive. While every Shavian will probably want to quibble about the omission of this or that favorite letter, Mr. Laurence's work truly compels one to speak of the art of editing. He and Shaw have collaborated to produce an extraordinary book. Alfred Turco, Jr. Wesleyan University TWO ON WELLS William J. Scheick and J. Randolph Cox, eds. H. G. Wells: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. $45.00 Michael Draper. H. G. Wells. London: Macmillan, 1987. Cloth £18.00 Paper £5.95 WELLSIANS WILL FLND Scheick and Cox's H. G. Wells: A Reference Guide useful and revealing. What makes this book special is not the bibliography of Wells's own work (there are a number of decent ones extant) but the chronological, annotated survey of just about everything that has been written on Wells. The book supplements Ingvald Raknem's H. G. Wells and His Critics (1962) and Patrick Parrinder's H. G. Wells: The Critical Heritage (1972). The summaries of articles and books in a couple of sentences and an occasional quotation cannot of course do entire justice, but, like the thin poles in deep snow that mark where roads and walkways are, they allow us to trace in broad outline how Wells has been perceived. The Guide is in its way a complete yet uninterpreted history of the reception of Wells. One pattern evident over the more than forty years since Wells's death is an increasing focus on Wells's fiction at the expense of his 323 Book Reviews Volume 32:3, 1989 non-fiction and on his early fiction at the expense of his late and at times even his middle-period fiction. Though there are occasional works, such as Warren Wagar's H. G. Wells and the World State (1961) or David Smith's recent biography, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (1986), that have attempted to counter the first tendency by reminding us of Wells's importance as a utopian thinker and activist, they are written by historians and are not very useful as guides to how to attain perspective on Wells's fiction. In the meantime literary critics continue to inscribe the now-accepted devaluation of Wells's late and middle work. Scheick's own work is a rare exception to this consensus. In general Wells's critics have mastered a language with which to appreciate the early work, and they have set themselves the project of refining the already understood interpretation and evaluation . Both the virtues and the problems of this current critical tendency are evident in Michael Draper's H. G. Wells. The book is part of a series on "modern novelists" issued by Macmillan. The title of the series and the list of novelists to be included suggest an exercise in consolidating a tradition. Volumes on Dostoevski and Flaubert are planned; though some living authors, such as Fowles, Lessing, and Updike, are on the list, most of these "modern" authors have been dead for many decades. A book in such a series usually attempts to cover all of the author's work evenly and to render a balanced evaluation of its place in the canon. Given the pressure to homogenize, Draper does a fine job of giving contour to Wells's enormous and varied output. He emphasizes what...